Does a solo run interest you? Are you going to try that while you wait for hard to unlock?

How come this doesn't work when you're in our group? ;-)

We've been doing almost everything you mention for over a week now. I joined some of the guys last night and we were't even coming close. I was getting really tired and wasn't having much fun so I bowed out and SpecOps and Cyber stepped in. Apparently they finally succeeded about an hour later, but I don't know if they did anything differently.

In any case, I'm getting quite sick of this fight and not having success. So if you are completely confident that we could take him out, I would love to go for it tonight. I still haven't done the raid at all this week (other than jumping in at Crota checkpoint a few times), so I would love to have a go from the beginning with our normal DBO crew.

Read on if you just can't kill him. The fight is easier than you think. I completed the raid 5 times at this point, and have done all the jobs in the last fight. This is what worked for me and my teams,

Need I remind you: "I swear to God, I may or may not strangle Cody if he ever attends a LAN."
I'm surprised that the teams you've been in have been successful in spite of your... Well, you. :P

Sword Carrier-

The hunter is the best class for this because 1. You can have tons of agility, and 2. you can go invisible making it much easier to stay in position. Max out your agility if you like. You won't be getting hit, and you can't recover life without the chalice, so armor and recovery do not matter in this fight. If you have MIDA, equip it as well. Turn on Escape Artist (Invisibility on blink strike hit), ShadowJack (increased invisibility duration), and Stalker (crouch to go invisible).

I dunno about all that... I seem to remember bringing the sun down into the Dark Below...
Because of Crota's ridiculously fickle nature, a self-Rez is more reliable than a blink strike, especially since it can be coupled with the Cheese method...
Also, a Warlock can hover out of his reach then work his way back quickly with the sword without ever touching the ground.

Your goal as the sword carrier should be to not die, and to get in as many hits as safely possible. You will either get 3 or 4 R2 strikes in before Crota's vulnerability wears off. The key to getting 4 is attacking him the instant he starts to kneel. If you are at all late behind this, only go for three. You have plenty of time, so don't get greedy.

Gotta watch out for his unpredictable behavior. He doesn't seem to follow a strict timing pattern when it comes to being downed, and his reach is borderline broken.

The best way to ensure you can start damaging him right away is to go invisible. While on the rocks, crouch, then jump up. This way, you can be near and you don't have to rely on precise timing. After your hits, right as he starts to turn orange, drop the sword, land a blink strike to turn invisible, then pick up the sword again while staying close. This way, you should not have much trouble with timing, and you can get in more hits.

I guess that could work, though I've yet to see a Hunter pull any of that off with any measure of success *cough* Cody *cough*...

Practice. This fight is actually easier than Atheon by quite a bit.

You basically just told us all of the tactics we've been refining, testing, and reviewing over the past two weeks... The problem isn't in the strategy. It's in the communication, execution, and timing. After last night, I'm confident in being able to bring Crota down much faster the next time...

- hope the sword doesn't arbitrarily disappear as soon as you kill the swordbearer

- hope Crota doesn't decide to ignore his pre-defined pathing and run off the platform before teleporting across the map

- hope you don't have rocket users who blow themselves up by shooting inside Ward of Dawn, or into the back of a friendly head

I did my first run last night with Cyber, Guardian, Stylus, and a couple other guys who's names have fallen out of my head (sorry guys!). We spent close to 2 hours trying to take down Crota with no luck. We used almost the same strategy you described (we went right side during the Ogres rather than middle). Some things that I think prevented us from succeeding:

* Timing the attack on Crota's shields.
We decided to use primary weapons to take down his shields for the first attack, saving our rockets for the 2nd attack. I think this was a mistake. The problem was that taking down his shields with primaries led to a lot of inconsistent timing. We never knew exactly how long it would take for his shields to drop, making it really difficult for Guardian to time his attacks with the sword. Next time, I say we use rockets for all attacks against his shields. Cody's suggestion of having the sword carrier make his move as soon as we shout "Fire" lines up with the videos I've watched. If just 3 of us fire a single volley of Gjallarhorn rounds, his shield will go down almost instantly.

* Not enough orbs for the sword carrier.

A few of us were consistently generating orbs for Guardian to pick up, but a) there weren't enough, and b) they weren't in the right place for him to pick them up on his way to attack Crota. He needed to double back towards the left steps, which he often didn't have time to do. We need more people generating orbs before we bring down the sword carrier, and they need to be further forward/in the middle.

* Not enough multitasking

While it's important for everyone to be specifically responsible for certain things (watching for boomers, calling out sword carrier, etc) I think a few members of the group last night were focused on their tasks at the expense of the overall battle. Each wipe, the stats would show a couple members of the group with only 6-8 kills while everyone else had 20-40. I know that never tells the whole story, but I think everyone in the group needs to be dividing their attention between performing their specific role while still helping deal with the massive crowds of thrawls. Many of our wipes were caused by simply being overrun by grunt troops.

* Rotate as quickly as possible.

We need to make sure we rotate to the right side as soon as we've taken down Crota's shield for the final attack before the Ogres. The few times we rotated quickly and efficiently, we were in position early enough to focus on thinning the crowds of Thrawls before the Ogres arrived. This let us turn all attention on the Ogres as soon as they arrived, and take them down quickly. More often then not, we were so late with our rotation that the thrawls were just starting to reach us the same time that the Ogres arrived. There were several rounds where I wasn't able to get a single shot off at the Ogres because I was desperately fighting to keep the thrawls away from the rest of the group.

Overall, I think we were pretty close. Just got to tighten up a few things :)